I just got an order for web hosting for someone in China. I elected to cancel the order.

Right now I am thinking I'll only accept orders from the United States, Canada and the UK.

Is this a good idea? It seems really risky taking orders from China which quite possibly could be spammers.

What countries do you accept orders from or don't accept from and why? Do you think I am on the right track with my judgement above?

Not these two;
200.73.172.229
203.130.196.254

Both just tried to card me using USA names from APNIC addresses.

i totally disagree with you, just because they are from China, doesn't mean they are spammers :rolleyes:

Block all the countries you want. :) That leaves more for us. :stickout:

Originally posted by conanqtran
i totally disagree with you, just because they are from China, doesn't mean they are spammers :rolleyes:

I wondering does everybody here agree with this opinion? Because maybe I am just wrong in my assumption.

Other things I noticed that sent off alarms were a yahoo japan email account and an incomplete phone number.

based on past experience, does anybody know if some countries are more likely to run a fradulent credit card transaction or spam?

If information is incomplete you should of course not accept that order. If you're based in the US, you could ban anyone outside, including Canada and the UK. I'm sure nobody would mind if you just want to be a local host.

Block all of africa .... I need more customers here ...

Or actually everyone south of equator I'll take ....
*click* hello Rackshack, I'd like to order 600 Servers please ...

But seriously, I'm sure if you look at the statistics most of the spammers are bored little american kids so blocking off countries might be a bad plan, although if you find specific domains/IPs that give trouble you might consider blocking those ....

I think the best thing to do is to work out a plan of attack based on your own experiences as time goes on. The only chargeback we've ever received was from a US address, and most fraud is from the same. Having said that we've also had orders from all points of the globe that have been flagged as suspect. Some we let through and have become excellent customers, some we just declined.

You develop a sense for it after a while and can usually pick them. If you find that your fraud orders are on the rise then sit back, and take a look, and work out a set of rules based on what you see.

Greg Moore

One way to protect yourself is to require any clients over a certain amount to fax you a copy of their ID and the credit card they are using. You can use this as evidence if they try to do a chargeback. Also, if you are uncertain on the phone number, try it. Ideally someone should pick up and you can just ask for the person who signed up and double verify the order. They will think more of your company for actually checking and you can sleep better knowing that the information is authentic.

Also, while it may not be the best idea to simply block whole countries from signing up (in fact, limiting to the countries you chose would prevent a large portion of internet users from utilizing your services) but instead review each order individually and go with your intuition. Is the IP from the same country as the credit card? How does the whois information compare to the contact information on the account? Is the name on the account the same as the name on the credit card? Try phone verification. Get a phone card for international calls. If their website already exists, check it out, do a search on google for information on it, find out the current or past hosts and try asking them if the customer has been good with paying or not, if there have been any problems. Don't say your client is going to switch to my services, but indicate you are going to do business with them and want a reference before accepting a large payment.

There are tons of things you can do to prevent chargebacks and fraudulent orders. You just have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each method and pick what works best for your business.

Take care to not take early assumptions that something is wrong just because the credit card does not match the guy signing the plan.
Yesterday, a friend of mine, that leaves in the same building as mine, wanted to sign for a webhosting (Blinx networks). He has a credit card but no Paypal.
So, I told him. Let me pay for you and you give me the money, using my Paypal account, because a Paypal payment is better than a direct Credit Card transaction, where the other side can have all the information about our credit card (we, as customers, are so afraid of fraud by the hosting company as the hosting company may be afraid of fraud by the user).

So, I paid the bill for him. The account will be in his name but Blinx will receive a payment from another name. I hope Blinx accepts it because we are doing nothing wrong or fraudulent.

So, each case is a case. Don't jump into conclusion or you may lose a serious customer.

If you know what your doing, eg do the proper checks you will a good idea if the signup is genuine.

This includes arin lookups, whois lookups, what the AVS stated etc etc (more can be found by searching these forums). If that fails just phone the client, how hard can it be?

Excuse my ignorance, and I know that this is off-topic so I apologize for that, but I have been reading a number of comments/posts lately that include the term "charge-back". I can get the general idea, but when should one do a "charge-back", how is it done, etc ...?

Bryan Jaskolka, CEO
Nevidia Interenet Solutions
http://www.nevidia.com

irvinehostin,

I take orders form all over the world, I have customers in 80 countries( Except Cuba-Iraq-Iran) we do take all the necessary step to make sure we having a true customer you will have a bad apple but must of the time you find good quality customers outside USA.

Our rules:
1- Accept Credit Card only
2- Ask for a copy of the Credit Card (back and front) security purposes
3- Call the customer if possible. ( confirmation )
4- If the customer prefers wired transfer do not walk away from the sale ask them to prepaid instead, 3 month or 6 month in advance whatever is profit for your company.

Is this is a true customer you will find out soon,

Good Luck.

Wow, great responses guys! I will take everything you've said into careful consideration.

I'll add (since others mentioned some things) that it is not always a good idea to deny someone service based on one item. I was simply saying in my previous post that there are flags to indicate you should look a bit closer. Don't automatically deny service because the name on the card is different from the account, but you might want to call the person whose card it is to make sure they are aware that it is being used.

We have many foreign accounts and they have been excellent for us.
Frankly, I think that if you cancel their order for their country of origin they have a genuine racism complaint.
Obviously, if their billing info is suspect then it's fine to reject them on those grounds.
I don't see why there is more chance of a spammer being from china rather than the USA.
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, I'd be interested to see the data but I've not found any stats proving either case.

Don't know about China, but isn't Russia known for its spam servers? I would assume it's because spamming is legal in countries like Russia and China. China barely has copyright law I think (getting better I hear).

Personally, I'd highly recommend you consider blocking from "Never Never Land". Apparently, Peter Pan is a complete nit when it comes to balancing his VISA account.

Below is a list of country's excluded by a conglomerate of online business.

Refer to the below list as countries with the highest risk of causing issues with payment or conducting otherwise highly suspect accounts.

Countries are added to this list when far too many issues arise from customers residing there. These reasons could be they are simply fraudsters or the country has really lax chargeback laws.

Afghanistan
Albania
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Bulgaria
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Estonia
Georgia
Hungary
Indonesia
Kazakhstan
Latvia
Lebanon
Macedonia
Pakistan
Poland
Romania
Russian Federation
Taiwan
Ukraine

One country you may wish to be wary of is Israeli, they are generally pretty good, but the exceptions to the rule are growing more and more each month.

Some of these countries may not be so bad in the webhosting industry, other then perhaps spam. But be very very very wary of all these countries if they are buying something and then never have to return to your site.

Hope this helps you all, I know this thread been inactive for ages.

We host sites for people in many of these countries without a problem. Sounds like nothing more than discrimination to me.

Israel? Israel is one of the most advanced and high-tech countries around the wolrld ... if you have a problem hosting for them ... then please don't. I'll be happy to pick up the request instead.

Next time you get any order from one of them, feel free te let them know that you don't trust them because of what country they are from ... so they should go to www.nevidia.com instead :-)

you should ban Turkey.
I live in turkey but 1000s of people here cheat. Most of those ppl will not pay . (Not talkin about myself!) They will cheat you will loose.

Turkey (!)
am i the only person who hates his country :(

I'm simply divulging a list of countries that have produced enough issues out of millions of transaction to be flagged as suspect.

This listing was not derived from the hosting industry but across a broad spectrum on online business. It is not an indication to the how these countries residents would behave purchasing this sort of service. I do not work in the webhosting business so I have no direct knowledge of the geographical fruad levels in relations to that type of business.

From my personal experience I'm aware that many of these countries are definitely very suspect and credit card payments are risky.

Turkey has had its problems but not of any magnitude to warrant a regional ban on the country.

As I mentioned in the previous post, when you are selling a physical product or access to a site i.e. a porn site these countries can be very very very risky.

Also, Nevidia, I've been searching for a month for a good webhost and I just settled on you about 2 hours ago :)

Aphex, I hope you'll be happy with us then!

Still have to disagree with you about the bans though ... believe me, there are more than enough scammers, spammers, and whatever else in the US, Canada, and England to make your head spin. Too many 15 year olds with too much time on their hands :-)

I personally do not like to idea of blocking any country. Instead, you should try to trace every order closely.

I am listing few tools (services) & trickes below, I used, which may help you also.

1. ChargeBack Bureau.org
http://chargebackbureau.org
I use to search the database of above service with the suspecious order details. They also help us to know the IP locations.

2. http://www.network-tools.com
To trace the IP location and other whois details.

3. Check every details provided by customer, especially, their email id, phone number, pin no. & comments, if any.

4. Also check their domain name whois details, if domain is already registered, to know who is in Admin & other contact details.

5. In my case, 2checkout.com also help us to know whether the user & billing country are same or not.
I think Paysystem.com may have the same facility also.

There are other small tricks also, which many times help us to protect from fraud orders.

Thanks.

Blocking customers from China or anywhere else may not be a good idea, as you may find, there are great business opportunities there. Of course, if you block, like what the other people says, you will make room for others. Thank you!

Like in Taiwan, where I am now, I "guess' there are at least 1 our of 5 business owners host their website in America. As America hoster provide better rental rate and better connection between their website to any part of the world.

Credit card is common in Asia yet not in China. So using other people's credit card is not uncommon. Whatsmore, there is no such things as "Company Credit Card" in China and Taiwan. They must pay with their persional ones. Older business people do not even owe a card, so it is very possible that they use credit cards from somebody else.

My 2 cents.

Originally posted by Aphex
Below is a list of country's excluded by a conglomerate of online business.

Refer to the below list as countries with the highest risk of causing issues with payment or conducting otherwise highly suspect accounts.

Countries are added to this list when far too many issues arise from customers residing there. These reasons could be they are simply fraudsters or the country has really lax chargeback laws.

Denmark

Denmark? Denmark is one of the richest countries (richer than the USA...) in this world, and a member of the European Union, I don't think that's a good idea to block them.

I was wondering about that too. Denmark is as far as I know, a country that follows the rukes and so on. Not a lot of cheaters.

An alternative solution would be to call the people who signed up (assuming you have a decent international calling plan) and verify the order if it looks suspicious. If you can't verify it by phone then cancel it. Simple solution to such a complex problem :rolleyes:

Originally posted by ReyoxLLC
An alternative solution would be to call the people who signed up (assuming you have a decent international calling plan) and verify the order if it looks suspicious. If you can't verify it by phone then cancel it. Simple solution to such a complex problem :rolleyes: A problem is that customers from non-english countries don't expect a english call, and I'm sure a lot of them don't like to get them :)

Originally posted by irvinehostin

Right now I am thinking I'll only accept orders from the United States, Canada and the UK.

What about Australia? NZ? Wait you dont need nz :D

RobbertC... if you sign up for something on a website that is written in English, and you give your phone-number in the contact form, then you shouldn't get surpriced to get a call from someone who speaks English, should you?

Reptilian Feline True, but writing and reading english is much more easier then talking english, especially if you don't expect it.

And I'd never had a call from a company that got my telephonenumber via the internet.

But, you have a point with that :)

I thought so... and... if you call someone in a country where they don't speak you language, you also expect a slight delay for them to get their mind set to the language-change, and when you do business, you want to do your best to understand eachother. Maybe even accept to wait until the person at the other end fetches someone who talks the language a little better (like my boss fetching me to talk English with the people he want's to do business with).

If this thread topic is true, then this is a local business not support worldwild...as I thought the major PC's/Server's hardware (and parts) came from ASIA (Japan,Taiwan,HK,KOR,SG etc..).. and most of big companies such as IBM,HP,CICSO,Compaq,Dell,Apple..etc , Their major OEM factory all over these countries (such as foxconn,Samsung,Acer,Asus,Gigabyte,UMC.. etc),..I thought block IP from these countries is a joke....

Where did this "industry list" come from? Link? Publication?

Whats wrong with Asian Sub-Continental countries like India or even Sri Lanka?

And who exactly are "foreigners", kemo sabe? (Excuse the cultural reference to the Lone Ranger - anybody remember or familiar?)

I believe I read that 60% of spam originates in the US. Anybody has stats on credit card fraud?
;)